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San Francisco and Hetch Hetchy Valley Gabriel L __________________________________________________________________ The Forbidden Water: San Francisco and Hetch Hetchy Valley Gabriel L. Mansfield Gabriel Mansfield is a sophomore history major from Onarga, Illinois. He wrote this paper for Dr. Lynne Curry’s HIS 2500: Historical Writing and Research Methods. After graduation Mr. Mansfield wishes to pursue a career in academic librarianship and double as “Duke Silver” at local jazz clubs. _____________________________________________________________________________ Northwest of the Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, and other iconic landmarks at Yosemite National Park in Northeastern California is a small valley known as Hetch Hetchy. This was a quiet spot that Sierra Club founder, nature lover, and preservationist John Muir described as “a grand landscape garden, [and] one of Nature’s rarest and most precious mountain temples.”1 At the beginning of the 20th Century, this beautiful expanse drew the attention of the city of San Francisco, which planned to dam the area to create a reservoir to use as a water source. Unfortunately for San Franciscans, this would not be an easy journey because of the stiff opposition to the city’s plan. This resistance would primarily be spearheaded by Muir, whose actions would ultimately not be enough to quell the city’s desire for this new water source. In late 1913, Congress would grant the city permission to begin building a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy Valley. Some of the few instrumental people in this effort to build the dam included: chief forester and conservationist Gifford Pinchot, and James Phelan, the mayor of San Francisco and a dam supporter from the time when the application was first submitted. The battle over the Hetch Hetchy Valley raises questions about how far Americans were willing to go for the sake of progress, and it enflamed a generation who were willing to go above and beyond to protect National Parks as a whole. This study relates to the emerging field of environmental history, which began around the late 1950’s and 1960’s with the publication of two books that set the standard for the decades to follow. Two prominent environmental historians, Samuel P. Hays and Roderick Nash published Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency in 1959 and Wilderness and the American Mind in 1967, respectively. These historians focused on conservation and preservation, in particular on figures like Gifford Pinchot and John Muir who shaped the environmental movement, with Muir specifically capturing attention.2 This can expressly be seen in the 2009 documentary by Ken Burns on National Parks, which venerates Muir and his “environmental crusade.” In dealing with the Hetch Hetchy controversy, Burns spends little time looking at the legitimate concerns of Pinchot and San Francisco in their drive to build a dam in Hetch Hetchy. To Burns, they appear the villains. As I will argue in this study, this villainization is too simplistic and a more neutral approach allows us best to understand both sides in the debate. Usually, when the Hetch Hetchy controversy is discussed, it is because of preservation and John Muir’s ideal of keeping National Parks, like Yosemite, pure and sacred. The focus is rarely centered on the side that is branded the villain, which in this controversy is San Francisco. However, there is merit to discussing the city’s side in this pivotal debate. There was clearly a reason for the city to choose the Hetch Hetchy Valley as a potential water source. For example, the location in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the cleanliness of the water, and the potential for hydroelectric power all made the site attractive. It seems unlikely that it was to spite the preservationists. One must consider the importance of the two larger forces on a collision course at this valley, conservationism and 1 John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra and Selected Essays (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2011), 310. 2 Richard White, “American Environmental History: The Development of a New Historical Field,” Pacific Historical Review 54, no. 3 (August 1985): 297-315. 24 preservationism. The Hetch Hetchy controversy was not between the city of San Francisco and the valley or John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, but what these two conflicting views represented in the larger picture. San Francisco had an ongoing issue with the sourcing of water long before the controversy with the Hetch Hetchy Valley. With the gold rush of the 1850s, tens of thousands flocked to this ever-growing city. This caused water shortages from the beginning, a struggle that continues to this day. Shortly after San Francisco was founded, merchants began selling water on the streets to take advantage of the thirsty residents. Eventually, “water was being shipped by barge from Marin County while other firms competed with one another and the city to increase the yield from local sources with dams, flumes, and reservoirs.”3 At the height of the water shortages, the city of San Francisco was constantly plagued with fires. Water peddlers and merchants consolidated and offered to contract out their water to the city. This group became known as the Spring Valley Water Works or Company, and it played a key role in the controversy of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.4 Scholars like Norris Hundley Jr., Kendrick Clements, and others would agree that the Spring Valley Water Company was the real villain in the Hetch Hetchy controversy, especially given that the Spring Valley Water Company was one of the sole reasons why San Francisco had to search for a new water source in the first place. The water company had bought all the usable watershed: springs, areas around rivers, etc.; San Francisco had no choice but to use the water supply that was in the hands of this company. In 1900, San Francisco finally found the opportunity for which it had been so desperately looking. The city “obtained the state legislature’s approval of a new city charter that mandated municipal ownership of utilities.” 5 Now the city could own a water supply. City officials set out to find the best private and non-private places to purchase land and break away from the grip the abhorrent Spring Valley Water Company had on San Francisco. Having tried once before to purchase Spring Valley Water Company without success, San Francisco moved on, considering other, more remote regions to purchase land. After considering multiple options, such as Lake 3 Norris Hundley Jr., The Great Thirst: Californians and Water 1770's-1990's (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 169. 4 Kendrick A. Clements, “Politics and the Park: San Francisco's Fight for Hetch Hetchy, 1908-1913,” Pacific Historical Review 48, no. 2 (May 1979): 187. 5 Hundley Jr., “The Great Thirst,” 170. 25 Tahoe, Mount Shasta, or the Sacramento River,6 they finally decided on the Tuolumne River.7 The river flows through the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and went through a smaller valley less than two hundred miles from San Francisco, the Hetch Hetchy Valley. San Francisco’s mayor, James Phelan, saw the potential of the dam, not only for the reservoir itself, but also for hydroelectric power, and he “quietly filed rights for the river” in fear of the Spring Valley Water Company hearing of the transaction and trying to purchase it for themselves.8 The valley was property of the federal government as part of Yosemite National Park, which could be a potential issue. Officials thought that “no problems would come to this.”9 They thought it would be easily approved, and work on the dam would begin shortly. To their dismay, this was far from the truth. In 1901, when Secretary of the Interior Ethan Allen Hitchcock received the application for permission to build a dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, he immediately denied it, proclaiming it was in the best interest of the nation not to imperil the beauty of the national park by putting a reservoir in the valley.10 Later, in 1903, Phelan tried again to secure rights for Hetch Hetchy but to no avail. In 1905 Phelan attempted to buy the water rights a third-time, but Secretary Hitchcock again denied the acquisition, giving the same reasons. All hope seemed lost for San Francisco in acquiring a new water source and being able to avoid commercially contracted water. Then it got worse for the city. In 1902, Phelan finished his third term as mayor and stepped down from the position. The man who succeeded him, Eugene Schmitz, had other plans for the proposed Hetch Hetchy reservoir, or rather his boss did. Schmitz, in fact, was irrelevant to this issue. Abe Ruef was the reason Schmitz came to power as mayor. Abraham Ruef was one of San Francisco’s most notorious political bosses.11 He used Schmitz as a puppet to get what he wanted and in January of 1906, Ruef moved to circumnavigate the “messy” issue of Hetch Hetchy. Instead, he proposed a contract with the Bay Cities Water Company. The company promised Ruef one million dollars for his efforts. Unfortunately for Ruef, the bribe was discovered during a series of trials on corruption in the city known as the “graft trials.”12 This drive to eliminate corruption, in fact, helped clear the way for the building of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which otherwise might have been delayed or halted by political shenanigans. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the fires that followed were also key factors in going forward with the Hetch Hetchy project. It was not so much the difference the water would have made, but it was the hysteria created by the disaster.13 Senator Key Pittman (D-NV) brought the earthquake to national attention. He blamed the extensive fires plaguing the city on the lack of water.
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